Just hand over all of your money

May 1, 2014

It is no wonder the federal government is confused about what is fair and right, when it comes to consideration of the Social Security Administration's now-halted program in which tax refunds were seized to recoup decades-old overpayments. The Internal Revenue Service is a model of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing. If it is the IRS's job to ensure the integrity of the tax administration system, the agency is handling its duties rather poorly.

According to a report by J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration, the IRS has paid nearly $3 million in bonuses to its own employees who had recent disciplinary problems. That figure includes $1 million to employees who actually owed back taxes at the time.

Some of these workers were also caught misusing government credit cards for travel, using drugs, threatening violence and fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits. And your federal government handed them nearly $3 million. It makes more sense than Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin suspended for review instead of outright ending the forced seizure of tax refunds in order to collect long-ago overpayments that were sometimes paid to Social Security recipients' parents or guardians when the recipients were children, and had no knowledge of the situation.

When George reported on the IRS debacle, his attempt to clarify the moral and legal code by which the federal agency should guide its actions went something like this: The program does not violate federal regulations, but it is inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws. That is a rather muddy way of saying a federal agency is operating as though it is above the laws it enforces - sometimes rather harshly - for the rest of us.

Of course, the IRS says it has new policies in place, now that it has been caught. But these latest news items out of Washington, D.C., are only the most recent in a drumbeat of reminders the federal government believes every dollar you earn belongs to them, no matter how badly they plan to mismanage it.